


Watcher, Ret.

by Alixtii



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic), Fray
Genre: Bisexual Characters, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Queer Character, Coaching, Community: 3_ships, Education, Grief, Heterosocial Friendship, High School, Lesbian Character, M/M, Male Protagonist, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Shop Class, Teenagers, Threesome, United Kingdom, boyslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-13
Updated: 2007-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:27:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are Watchers, retired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watcher, Ret.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katemonkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katemonkey/gifts).



Melaka carefully makes her way through the old cemetery. It's on consecrated ground, so that the lurks haven't been able to follow her in, but still she has to navigate through the remains of ruined mausolea.

This place is still sacred to the Watchers, dating from those times when they were not just a crazed cult but an organization capable of guiding and training Slayers. This is where they laid their dead, their secrets being put to rest with the last sane Watcher to be buried there, no one knew quite for sure how many centuries ago.

She passes a giant white pillar upon which is written only the single name, SUNNYDALE, and wonders idly whether it was a Slayer or a Watcher who was so revered as to warrant such a large monument. There are many other graves of Slayers here, many marked only with a single name, KENDRA or FAITH, but some have two or three names, NICOLA WOOD or BUFFY ANNE SUMMERS.

She passes out of the Slayers' portion of the cemetery and into the area reserved for Watchers. Some surnames are more common than others; GILES and PRYCE and POST recur frequently as she makes her way through the worn gravestones. Then she comes across a series of three graves: DANIEL OSBOURNE, 1980-2013; RUPERT GILES, 1965-2031; and ALEXANDER HARRIS, 1981-2048.

They share a single epigraph:

_The past isn't dead. It isn't even past. —William Faulkner_

*

He is a Watcher, retired. They all are, he supposes, now that there are no girls to train or monsters to fight—nothing to Watch, in other words. Which isn't to say that there aren't plenty of parasites still draining the Council's coffers, pouring over old texts, translating and analyzing and speculating and coming up with absolutely nothing of any import. They're past that now—beyond prophecy, beyond ritual, beyond magic.

Which is why he leaves all that behind him, goes back to school, becomes certified to teach vocational classes at the high school level: woodshop and metalshop, mostly. Finds a school in southern Colorado where the administrators do not resemble rodents nor are they ever eaten by students or giant snakes, and watches as a new generation of teenagers go through the hell he went through so many years ago, sans the actual monsters and demons.

Sometimes it amazes him that he can walk through the halls of the school and not flashback to preying-mantis teachers and invisible students and fishman swimming teams.

He coaches the girls' cross-country team; if there's anything that he has learned how to do, it is run.

*

Sally Jane Lopez was not a Slayer. The source of her power was not mystical or demonic.

She was just fast—her own ability, born of good genes and extensive practice, her own choice. She didn't have any special destiny; the world did not rest upon her shoulders; when she ran, she was as fast as the wind and the world seemed to go on in its own way. Xander would try not to be reminded of a young girl he had known in high school years ago.

*

Christopher Chorezki was not a sidekick. One of Xander's best students, he could make a work of art out of any piece of wood or metal. It was a skill that would never be put to use forging axes or carving stakes, or refitting windows that had been broken time and again by hordes of rampaging demons.

If he was lucky, Christopher Chorezki would become a fine artisan; more likely, he'd end up working at the auto parts store down the street. Either way, his life would be his own.

*

Most nights, Xander does not dream, and he is thankful. But some nights he dreams of three bodies locked in a passionate embrace, and he wakes up in a cold sweat, remembering the best days and nights of his life, days and nights that he would just as soon forget if he could.

*

When Xander hears the familiar English tones in the hallway inquiring after him, he feels immediately a mix of anger, hatred, and fear. The third one in particular surprises him; after all, it is not as if the old Watcher poses any threat to him, would ever think of harming Xander. But fear is an emotion Xander has not had to feel in years, is one alien to this world where girls can run and boys can work and it never has to be any more complicated than that.

He races out into the hall, quick to accuse his guest. "What are you doing here?" he shouts, and several students turn from their lockers to see what is the matter. "I've told you—"

He's told Giles that he wants no part of the Council, that he won't spend the rest of his life trying to live in a world that no longer exists.

"I know," Giles interjects. "I'm not here because of that. I'm here because of Willow."

Xander looks up at Giles, not understanding. "Willow?" he asks, and the word is unfamiliar as it leaves his tongue. He hasn't spoke it in years. It is a name that belongs to the world which has passed. Like Buffy, Dawn, Faith, Anya. Like Oz.

Giles nods. "She's awake, Xander."

*

So many died in that last battle. Most of the Slayers died in the traditional way, a vampire's fangs at their throat. Some, like Dawn, beings fashioned out of pure magic, simply faded away. Oz's death was the worst of them all, the wolf being pulled right from his body, leaving only a bloody carcass behind.

And Willow? Magic had run through her veins for so long that when it left, her body had collapsed under the strain of supporting itself without it. No one thought she would ever wake from her comatose state, not really.

And the two Scoobies who were left scattered to their separate continents, because when the two lovers looked at each other it was too painful to remember they had once been three men in love.

*

"Hey, Willow," Xander says as he enters the small room in the Watcher's clinic—an empty, mostly deserted building with but this one patient left to care for. He tries to smile, and finds the gesture easier than he expected. "How are you?"

"Still weak," she answers, returning his smile. "But good."

He sits down next to her bed, and they talk. He tells her about Sally Jane Lopez and Chris Corezki, and about the brave new world they live in now that magic has passed from the world. "At least for now," he says, thinking of the faith that Giles has refused to let die these last years while he's been off teaching the next generation how to make napkin holders.

Willow is living proof that Xander's past might not be as dead as he thought it was.

"You'll stay here, right?" Willow asks. "With me?"

"Forever," he answers, even though he knows the problem with forever isn't that it's too long, but that it never lasts long enough.

*

Being in England now means seeing Giles, almost every day sometimes, and he's glad to find out that his bridges haven't been burned, just neglected. The older man is there for him and for Willow, not making any demands of Xander, patiently waiting, and Xander realizes that it's time to face the metaphorical demons which have survived even when the literal ones have long since perished.

"I shouldn't have left," he tells Giles. "Shouldn't have tried to have hid from the past."

But Giles just shakes his head. "You were doing your best to look ahead," he says kindly. "It's the most any of us can ever do, really." He pauses. "I miss him, too," he adds, and his voice is cracking in a decidedly un-British way, and that's when Xander kisses him for the first time in too many years, and even though it's different without Oz there it isn't bad, not at all.

*

They are Watchers, retired. But one day, maybe, there will be a Slayer again, and when that day comes, they will be there, waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> [1 I Saw Three Ships Comment](http://community.livejournal.com/3_ships/26593.html?thread=66273#t66273) | [LJ/DW Comments](http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/121639.html#comments)


End file.
